Based upon their observations, most market forecasts estimate that the total cloud services market will reach $45-50 billion revenue by 2013 or 2014 -- including the Bain forecast that was previewed at the "Americas Telco 2.0 Brainstorm" event, which was hosted by STL Partners in April 2011.

At their EMEA brainstorm event, the attendees were given an overview of the component cloud markets and examples of different cloud service approaches. They were then asked for their views on the potential share that service providers might garner from the addressable cloud revenue opportunities within each category.

In total, the attendee consensus view amounted to service providers gaining 18 percent of the revenue for cloud services -- within the next three years.

The following chart contains a summary of their findings (click to enlarge):